The Poethical Wager

by Joan Retallack

In these highly inventive essays, Joan Retallack, acclaimed poet and essayist, conveys her unique post-utopian vision as she explores the relationship between art and life in today's chaotic world. In the tradition of the essay as complex humanist exploration, she engages ideas from across Aristotle's definition of happiness, Epicurus's swerve into unpredictable possibility, Montaigne's essays as an instrument of self-invention, John Cage's redefinition of Silence. Within her unifying rubric of poethics, Retallack gives the reader plenty of surprises with a wonderful range of examples, situations, and texts through which she conducts her exploration. A computer glitch, a passage from Gertrude Stein's favorite detective novelist, the idea of the experimental feminine, a John Cage performance―all serve as occasions for inquiry and speculation on the way to her poethics of a "complex realism."

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nonfiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Ryleigh Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

extremely unintelligible

[Marcella]

Just ordered from UC big sale!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creative thinking that encourages us to take risks; focuses on (my) cultural heroes--Gertrude Stein, Rosmarie Waldrop, John Cage. Often very entertaining to read too.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

push the edges of your brain